VILLAGE DESTROYED BY AN AEROLITE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 18 September 1913, Page 2

VILLAGE DESTROYED BY AN AEROLITE.

The village of Alcocer, near Valencia, Spain, has been practically wiped out and the surrounding country ravaged by an "aerolite ■of great size; Shortly after noon, on July 7th, there dropped from a cloudless sky a great lurid ball of lire. A deafening series of detonations like a thousand rifle shots'resounded through the still atmosphere and, scattering tongues of flame in all directions, the heavy mass buried itself tin the earth. The surrounding "sounding was set on lire, and an . hour nothing but blackened masses of* smouldering cinders remained of farmhouses, haylofts, trees, and gathered crops of hap, wheat, and olives. -•" ■ The whole >. population of Alcocer was at the moment attending a requiem service in the church, some two miles distant. But for that circumstance, tho loss of- life would have P? 1 ■£*"'*• ■■■^"•m—m-"""—-~~-'^%^^r%

been terrible. As it was, five persons were seriously burnt, one of them succumbing to his injuries the same evening. At the moment the aerolite fell at, Alcocer a terrific thunderstorm, which was accompanied., by a 'rain of stones, some the size of oranges and \%ghing nearly* two pounds, buret over the neighbouring villages of Benavites an Ouartil. The ground was covered in places to a deptff of fiyje inches by these .stones. A pungent odour of'sulphur pervaded the locality for hours after the phenomenon.